By Blog writing is probably one of the best ways of reaching out to the target audience. Viewers appreciate the originality of the content that bloggers present them. Learn about the helpful ways of avoiding accidental plagiarism while creating blogs.
Know the tits and bits of accidental plagiarism
The act of creating duplicate content without the consent or knowledge of the original content creator is known as plagiarism. Plagiarism is predominant in all fields, including blogging. Although, there is no denying that plagiarism is not always intentional.
If bloggers deliberately copy word to word from another author’s work or a source site, it results in plagiarism. Content created by paraphrasing, summarizing, or content with missing citations and quotation marks that do not follow the rules of safely using outside sources can result in accidental plagiarism.
Know why accidental plagiarism is harmful
Plagiarism of any kind is dishonest and unethical work. Both intentional and accidental plagiarism meets the same fate.
- Plagiarized content leads to face loss and damages the reputation of the blogger.
- Bloggers may lose valued followers and viewers if their blogs face the accusation of publishing plagiarized content.
- In many cases, if the copyright of any website content gets violated, the offender can face monetary loss.
- In the academic field, even in the case of dealing with accidental plagiarism, strictness is maintained. If students are using unfair means, their projects get canceled. They receive low grades, and in many instances, it leads to the loss of an academic year.
- Websites with plagiarized content also face difficulties such as low SEO ranking. If websites use copied content, search engines detect the source site and redirect the users to the original site affecting the website traffic with duplicate content.
Avoid accidental plagiarism while blogging:
- Thorough research:
A blogger must be well versed with the topic and serve the audience authentic and original information. Before proceeding with the issue at hand, bloggers must gather knowledge via different sources and prepare the content with necessary modification.
Even if they use varied sources of information, it is significant to remember that the writers can borrow ideas. However, the language of the content should be original and not a copy-paste one.
- Do not rush:
People often created plagiarized content when they adopt shortcuts, and mostly this happens if the content is created in a hurry. Blogging is an expression of creativity where the writer plays with the word. Creativity is not time-bound.
If the writer has to follow a strict timeline, they end up adopting such comfortable alternatives. Take enough time to complete the task with ease.
- Content with copyright:
Writers should strictly avoid any content with copyright on it. Using such sources may land the writers in legal problems. Copyrighted content aims to limit the access of outsiders over the original content. Thus bloggers must avoid such content to reduce the chances of accidental plagiarism.
- Follow citation rules:
Bloggers make use of different source sites while creating content. Often these influences reflect in their created content. Even if bloggers use the author’s exact words in their blog for reference, they must use quotation marks to indicate that those phrases, which have been quoted from an outside source and do not belong to the blogger.
If the bloggers are not sure about the exact source, they must consider using citations for mentioning all the sources they have used. Parenthesis is another helpful way of avoiding plagiarism.
- Plagiarism checker tools:
Different plagiarism checker tools effectively prevent accidental plagiarism. Citation checker tools identify the words that have been directly quoted from outside sources, and bloggers can use appropriate citation techniques to avoid accusations of plagiarism.
In the academic field, teachers can also seek the help of students’ plagiarism checker tools to detect unwanted plagiarism in students’ works. The tools are easy to use and are available completely free of cost.
- Limit paraphrasing:
While paraphrasing and summarizing appear as seemingly harmless but paraphrasing can contribute to plagiarism too. Even if writers paraphrase or summarize parts of a written piece that belong to someone else, they must replace all original words of the author with synonyms.
- Document comparison:
Comparing documents is another feature that different software offers. If the bloggers are unsure about the content and the source they have used, they can run a comparison check between the source site and the content created to check documents for plagiarism.
At the end of the process, the app generates a result with the repetitions and similarities being highlighted. It enables the users to make the desired change in their content and avoid plagiarism.
While manual proofreading documents is a laborious task demanding hours of undivided attention on the part of the bloggers, these tools are user-friendly and fast. With the help of its internet database, the app carious out the task of analyzing written content and generates an accurate result.
